Episode Details

The Enhanced Games just began trading on the New York Stock Exchange, backed by Peter Thiel and Donald Trump Jr., with a $25 million prize pool for 50 athletes and a $50 million total budget for an event built around one radical idea: athletes should be allowed to use performance-enhancing substances in a safe and supervised environment. The CEO Max Martin joins Front Office Sports on the day the company went public to explain how they got here and what comes next. The games take place Memorial Day weekend in Las Vegas with 2,500 invite-only spectators, but the broadcast strategy is something no major sports property has tried before. Athletes can compete clean or enhanced, and the question of how much each athlete discloses about what they are taking, and how that transparency actually works in practice, is one of the more complicated questions the Enhanced Games has had to answer. The MLB steroid era forever changed how sports fans think about performance enhancing drugs. The Enhanced Games is making the argument that the entire framework around banned substances in sports needs to be rethought, that world records are being broken, and that the future of the league extends well beyond Las Vegas and well beyond the three sports launching this year. CHAPTERS 0:00 Introduction and Enhanced Games Goes Public on NYSE 1:09 The Road to Today: Three Years of Headwinds and Controversy 4:54 The $25 Million Prize Pool and Who Is Funding It 6:24 Where to Watch the Games and the Media Rights Strategy 7:50 Will Donald Trump Jr. Be There in Attendance 8:07 Athletes Competing Clean vs Enhanced: What Gets Disclosed 10:09 What FDA-Approved Substances Are Actually Allowed 11:19 The MLB Steroid Era and Whether Society Should Embrace PEDs 13:59 Age Limits and Future Plans for the Enhanced Games 15:47 World Records and Whether They Count Officially

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